United States or Cyprus ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"That yawl was alongside," cried Griffin "no one was in her, however, but Giuntotardi and the girl." "Beg your pardon, sir," said a young foretop-man, who had just descended the rigging "I saw the boat from aloft, sir, and it hung some time, sir, under the starboard main-chains. It was so dark, I couldn't fairly make it out; but summat seemed to be passed into it, from a port.
The old foretop-man was sitting beside the trapdoor, peering down into the blackness of the cellar, and listening intently. "That you, Master Kit? Would you step this way, sir? There keeps on a kind of a rumbling like in the drain a'most as though the gentlemen be running a cargo. I ca'ant justly make it out." The boy came to his side and listened.
It was damnable! He pulled himself together with a jerk. Here he was becoming unjust, irritable, womanish; everything he had always most despised in a man of action. A shout came to him from seaward. A shot followed. The perspiration started to his forehead. He ran to the ladder-head. In the dimness below he could see the old foretop-man sitting alert beside the black square of the open trap.
A calm voice, already strangely familiar, reassured him. "By your leave, sir, it's about time for you to rouse and bitt." It was Nelson's old foretop-man. The moon, slanting through the window, shone on his white head and those tranquil, big-dog eyes of his. Kit relaxed his hold. "That you, Piper?" he sighed. "I was dreaming of Fat George. What's the time?"
The boy could see the old foretop-man in the darkened passage. A hatchet was in his mouth; he was handling the door with one hand, and his chair with the other. So easy for a whole man to open the door, so hard for the disabled seaman! The Grenadier, hounding with huge strides, was already almost there. "Man on your left, Piper!" the boy screamed. "All right, sir!" mumbled the old seaman.
But he's not to say spoke these hours past." The door opened and Kit entered on tip-toe. The Parson beckoned him, and drawing aside the clothes-horse, entered the Sanctuary. Kit followed reverently. Within stood the kitchen dresser. On it, in the religious light, lay the old foretop-man.
The contrast revolted the lad. The table on which he sat began to rattle. Quietly he slipped off it. But the old foretop-man had heard. Leaving his post, he came rumbling across the uneven flags. "The waitin time's generally always the worst time, sir," he whispered. "Sooner farty actions than wait for one I've hard Lard Nelson say it himsalf."
It may be well to have more opinions than one on so weighty a matter. Forward there! send the foretop-man that is called Fid upon the poop. Your companions are so intelligent and so faithful, Mr. Wilder, that you are not to be surprised if I shew an undue desire for their information."
Before him knelt the Parson with low head, swathing his feet with strips of torn towel, absorbed as a surgeon, careful as a mother. "Is that easy? now how's that? try your foot down! Another turn round the ankle? Remember, it'll be rough going till you strike the grass." At the loop-hole Nelson's old foretop-man watched and waited. A gleam smote his silver hair and prophetic forehead.
"True you must have seen service in that war, on one side, or the other?" "If you say both sides, you'll not be out of the way. In 1775, I was a foretop-man in the Romeny 50, where I remained until I was transferred to the Connecticut 74 " "The what?" said I, in surprise. "Had the English a line-of-battle ship called the Connecticut?"
Word Of The Day